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How important is a boat/ATV?

Ok, I am new to living in Alaska and really love my duck hunting. As of now, I do not have boat or a four wheeler. I live in Homer and am getting discouraged that people that do duck hunt take their boat or 4 wheeler to get to the duck. How important do you think it is to have one of those toys to get birds to hunt locally in this area. I'm not so much into the jumpshooting as I am into putting out a spread of goose and duck decoys and do some calling (I'm told that I can blow a call pretty well.) I'm not looking for any hotspots, just a little more on if I need to look a little bit harder for a relatively shallow pond that I can wade into to get a bird and set up decoys. Perhaps I have to drive a little past Soldotna and go for those ponds or I might have to make a trip up to Potter's Marsh, which would be kinda far for a day hunt. (but then again I work 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off however would like to find something closer, it would remind me too much of Kalifornia if I had to drive 200 miles to hunt ducks.)
If anyone in my neck of the woods wants to go, PM me, I have a layout blind, 3 dozen goose decoys (24 shells and 12 floaters) along with 3 dozen duck dekes (1 doz. mallard, 1 doz. widgeon, and 1 doz. pinners.) I'm willing to throw in on fuel and my company . I also know how to be still and use cover. Thanks, ya'll.

Don't know anything about Homer and its local areas. The one thing you have noticed since leaving Cali is that we don't have a lot of roads up here and where there are side roads people are living there. Alaska's side roads for the last several thousand years have been its rivers and streams. In many places they still are the only "roads", even with the ATV being normal now.

Your best bet is to talk to local folks about ponds to get into by foot or by canoe. Using Google Earth may help out as well. Looking at it now there are not a lot of ponds near K-Bay, but there are lots of ponds between Homer and Anchor Point off the old highway, but there are lots of houses there because there are roads. There does appear to be many trails there and I would bet that those are ATV mud bog trails not ment for walking on.

The one cool thing about Alaska ponds is that most do not have too thick of a water layer, but that 4 to 6 feet of muck on the bottom is not fun to wade in.

At the minimum you might want to find a canoe and check out some of the pond/lake systems near Soldotna on the Swanson River system. But the Kenai Penn is covered in small lakes and you will soon discover that Alaska is one huge swamp and the ducks can be anywhere they want to be and that will be far from anything close to a road.

other option

Maybe try one of those cheap inflatable boats from fred meyer or walmart I have had one for almost 3 years now and it still holds air easy to paddle inflates rather quick and easy to get in and out of and would be easy enough to hide near a duck blind. Just a thought

Justin

Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "HOLY **** WHAT A RIDE!!!"

Ditto on the access issues. If you could only have one thing up here that would do the most for access, then a boat designed for skinny water is the ticket. People use flat bottom boats, square-stern canoes, etcetera for that. For duck hunting, I think I'd go for the square-stern canoe and pop a small motor on it. That way, you could go downstream into your hunting area but still come back up without much effort, and you could paddle it wherever you needed (or wanted) to as well. If you want to use a boat for bigger game, then you'll need a bigger boat and have to accept the trade off that it won't go as many places. For that canoe, don't bother with an electric trolling motor. The same weight in motors and fuel will get you much further if you buy a gas motor, and it'll go upstream far easier. There's some really nice 4-stroke small motors available from Honda and Yamaha nowadays ...down to only 2 horsepower if you want.

I'd suggest using google earth to try to find some marshes around the norht fork road area or at the mouth of just about every creek. Lots of hunting close by homer for sure and as long as you aren't lazy you should be able to get into good duck hunting pretty easily with just chest waders. The kenai flats are probably the most popular on the pennisula. A canoe is very helpful in south central in general but not totally nessisary. A boat is nice if you live in homer of course but thats because of fishing and exploring the other side of the bay. An ATV is totally unnessisary for duck hunting IMO, unfortunatly because they are legal almost everywhere in the state if you wanna go moose hunting you probably are gonna want an ATV, but its still not nessisary. If I had money to spend on toys I'd start with a canoe and a river raft, then I'd buy a comm fishing boat, then I'd buy more skis then a snowmobile and lastly an ATV...

The flats south of Kenai are popular for people with no boat or canoe. With a canoe I'd be looking at the middle Kenai, Cooper lake, Swanson river and associated lakes, Moose river, and the Watson lakes east of Soldotna.

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